Just five days ago the city's aviation director told us that Dallas Love Field was "the worst house on the block," a poorly tended-to property in need of amenities along its outskirts -- among them, restaurants and retail and office towers along Lemmon Avenue -- that could serve as a "buffer." And during our talk, Mark Duebner noted that in order to usher in the new, the city would have to raze some of the old properties on airport property.

And that isn't sitting well with some local architects and preservationists who regard the building, empty since 1993, as one of Dallas's most significant mid-century modern marvels. Because if you didn't know, and I didn't till this morning, it was designed by William Pereira and Charles Luckman -- who were responsible for, among other landmark locations, CBS Television City in Los Angeles; Los Angeles International Airport; the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco; the Forum in L.A.; and Madison Square Garden.

At the moment there's an online petition calling for its preservation. It's calling for the building's restoration and insists that "eliminating this last piece of Braniff history is an affront to the hard working people that made aviation a fundamental industry at Dallas Love Field and the region." Sources say the petition was launched by local architects appalled at the proposed razing. And come Monday the newly launched Save Braniff's online petition goes live; right now it's a history-of that says "the City of Dallas Department of Aviation has taken steps to try and tear down this historic piece of Dallas history."

I haven't been able to reach Duebner or Dallas City Manager Mary Suhm this morning; messages have been left. But as the tax rolls show, the building didn't officially become city property until 2003, long after DalFort Aerospace -- once, a Braniff subsidiary -- had moved out and stopped paying rent.

But both the Legend and Braniff buildings have been at the center of litigation filed in 2008 by Love Terminal Partners, which once controlled the Legend terminal and would later allege, following the passage of the Wright Amendment Reform Act, that the city had made a secret deal to demo the Legend terminal "to ensure the success of the scheme to divide the North Texas markets and to insulate Southwest from increased competition," according to legal docs.

In 2008, Love Terminal Partners sued the U.S. government in federal court over passage of the WARA, which reduced "the number of gates available for passenger air service at Love Field to no more than 20" while lifting the restrictions on short-haul flights out of the city-owned airport come 2014. (Hence, the Love Field Modernization Program currently taking place at the airport, where the new ticketing lobby is scheduled to open in three weeks.) Said the suit, the back-room deal involving local and federal officials made their lease agreement worthless and demanded "just compensation for the Government's appropriation" of LTP's property, "including their Love Field lease rights and LTP's terminal building." Around that same time, the city council was often briefed behind closed doors about "the exercise of eminent domain" at both the Legend and Braniff buildings.

The lawsuit has been working it was through the federal courts for four years, with Margaret M. Sweeney, a federal judge for the United States Court of Federal Claims, kicking it back to trial court in 2011. Ruled Sweeney, "Although the WARA designated Dallas as the party responsible for acquiring and demolishing the Lemmon Avenue Terminal gates as part of a broader commitment to modernize Love Field and to facilitate the end of the Wright Amendment, the federal government sanctioned such actions." Coincidentally, a trial involving the disputed properties just wrapped three days ago, with further docs due to the court in coming months.

Preservationists familiar with the situation said this morning that a handful of architects approached the city about landmarking the building in order to protect it from being razed. And they were told that effort would go nowhere: It's a city-owned building, and if the city wants the Braniff building gone, there's no way it will step in front of its own wrecking ball.